Editorial: Let's get moving without politicians

Whether the Knowledge Wave conference is counted a success will depend not on the feelings of delegates as they left on Friday night. Not on the reaction of politicians made to feel uneasy by what they heard. Not on the quality of its speakers or a flotilla of recommendations. It will be judged by what happens next week, next month and next year.

Delegates left the conference energised by a sense of promise and commitment. Politicians were either similarly moved by that energy or disquieted by its potential. Yet, with the exception of an announced plan by Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall to join forces with expatriate New Zealander and Berkeley professor David Teece to create a database to exploit the potential of the Kiwi diaspora, there were no direct action points. Rather, it produced recommendations.

Is that a poor outcome? No. For the recommendations to have any effect, there needs to be a commitment by many more than the 450 delegates who, significantly, carried conference badges that identified who they were but not from whence they came. They attended as individuals and spoke in the same vein. Hence the refreshing candour from the Governor of the Reserve Bank. However, they represented most of the constituencies that must play a part in turning the recommendations into reality. They may yet prove to be the progenitors of a national consensus on growth strategies and implementation.

The Prime Minister did not (and, in fairness, probably could not) divorce herself from her office. Her measured and somewhat restrained tone at both ends of the conference had a dampening effect. She was not about to be swept along by delegates to commit to any strategies unless they had been masticated by the coalition's policy machine.

But her caution did not preclude her from showing real leadership by embracing the spirit of consensus in tones crafted to move the nation. Instead, she used a final press conference to say what the Government would not do. She scored points by supporting the event but, in failing to carry the momentum forward, she missed the boat.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Anderton, did worse. He walked off the end of the wharf. His criticism of the conference's failure to showcase local achievement and his plan for another gathering next (election) year did no more than reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the conference.

Many of Mr Anderton's local achievers were in the room as delegates. They were there to hear an array of international and local speakers before contributing their own views. And contribute they did. They did not fall into the trap of believing that the Government is the source of our collective salvation.

If the country waits for this Government, or any Government, to cherry-pick the easy or popular recommendations of the Knowledge Wave conference and implement them to best political advantage it, too, will miss the boat. Paraphrasing conference speaker Sean Dorgan, it is time for politicians to stop thinking they are there to run the country and start seeing that they are there to help develop it. Their role is to ensure the environment is right. It is for the rest of the nation to build New Zealand, economically and socially.

It is clear from insights expressed that significant growth will require big changes. It is equally clear that too many people in New Zealand are change-averse and risk-averse. That accounts for what Harvard professor Michael Porter correctly judges to be our lack of self-confidence. Professor Porter told the conference that confidence and commitment are all that separate us from success. He is right.

While the Government takes the conference recommendations and decides which of them are politically expedient, while the Opposition works on policy calculated to differentiate it from the Government, and while Wellington's bureaucrats sulk over the fact that they could not control the conference, it is high time the rest of us moved on.

The leaders who came together to create the Knowledge Wave conference can be at the forefront of that movement. As for the event, its real success may yet be judged by the generation represented by the students, who moved delegates to a standing ovation on the final afternoon. Their hopes rest on what happens next.

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